Warszawa Gubernia Duma Voters Lists, 1907

This database contains the names of over 10,000 Jewish men living
in Warszawa Gubernia (Warsaw province, of the Russian Kingdom of
Poland), who were entitled to participate in the election for the
Czarist State Duma (parliament) in 1907.

These voter lists were published in the Russian government newspaper
Varshavskiya Gubernski Vedomosti [News of Warsaw Gubernia],
10 July 1907. Written in Cyrillic, they were translated by Mrs. Galina
Shuster and edited by Ada Holtzman,
Project Coordinator.

This project was sponsored by the Research Division of JewishGen
and made possible by donations to
JewishGen-erosity.

The voter lists contained 24,828 names. Only the Jewish names
were extracted for this database: 10,142, almost 41% of the total names in
the lists. There are 20 towns covered:

Town

Coordinates

Distance/Directionfrom Warsaw

TotalRecords

JewishRecords

%Jews

Błonie

52°12' / 20°37'

16.6 miles WSW

731

226

30.9%

Gąbin (Gombin)

52°24' / 19°44'

54.4 miles WNW

722

343

47.5%

Gostynin

52°26' / 19°29'

65.2 miles WNW

1,040

400

38.5%

Grójec

53°03' / 20°49'

55.8 miles N

860

499

58.0%

Kaluszyn

52°13' / 21°49'

34.6 miles E

1,433

998

69.6%

Kutno

52°14' / 19°22'

69.1 miles W

1,802

914

50.7%

Łowicz

52°07' / 19°56'

46.1 miles W

1,697

619

36.5%

Mińsk Mazowiecki

52°11' / 21°34'

24.4 miles E

2,398

269

11.2%

Mszczonów

51°59' / 20°31'

27.5 miles SW

1,096

461

42.1%

Nasielsk

52°35' / 20°48'

24.5 miles NNW

428

208

48.6%

Nieszawa

52°50' / 18°54'

96.9 miles WNW

394

140

35.5%

Płońsk

52°38' / 20°23'

37.1 miles NW

1,348

731

54.2%

Pułtusk

52°43' / 21°06'

32.5 miles N

1,511

616

40.8%

Radzymin

52°34' / 20°22'

34.5 miles NW

647

362

56.0%

Skierniewice

51°58' / 20°09'

41.0 miles WSW

1,431

423

29.6%

Sochaczew

52°14' / 20°15'

31.7 miles W

587

353

60.1%

Warka

51°47' / 21°12'

33.3 miles SSE

733

394

53.8%

Warszawa

52°15' / 21°00'

-

2,467

1,241

50.3%

Włocławek

52°39' / 19°02'

87.2 miles WNW

2,997

673

22.5%

Zakroczym

52°26' / 20°38'

20.0 miles NW

506

272

53.8%

Total

24,828

10,142

40.8%

The Gubernskie Vedomosti were Czarist-era government newspapers,
published in each gubernia between 1838 and 1917. These newspapers
included official government notices, including these voters lists for the
elections for the Russian parliament (Duma) were held (or supposed to be
held) in 1906, 1907, and 1912. These are the years in which voter
lists were published. The lists which have been translated for this
JewishGen database are part of the Duma voters lists for year 1907.

The lists include thousands of names, Jews and other non-Russians among
them, of men who met certain criteria and were thus eligible to vote for
the Czarist Duma. Among the eligibility requirements was that the
voter must be over 25 years old. The principle eligibility criteria
is listed in the "Voter Status" field of the database, such as taxpayers,
property and business owners. The names listed also include patronymics
-- their fathers' given names.

The greatest value of these lists is mainly in the small towns in
Poland for which no civil records (births, marriages and deaths) are
available. For areas where we have access to good vital records,
they add only a little value. But for towns/regions where there are
no existing vital records, these lists can be very valuable sources for
genealogical research.

These lists were one of the main sources used by Alexander Beider's
to compile his book A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the
Kingdom of Poland (Avotaynu, 1996). See Michael Steinore's
article "An Analysis and Guide to Beider's Sources in the United States",
in Avotaynu XIV:3 (Fall 1998), pages 33-39, especially page 35.

The database contains all the information that is on the original
list itself. There is no additional information available in the
original source. For an illustration of one of the original lists,
click on the image below.

The database contains the following fields:

Surname, Given Name: The last name (family name)
and first name(s) (forename(s)) of the voter.

Father: The voter's father's given name, which was given
in patronymic form in the original list.

Year: The year of the election. In this case,
always "1907".

Voter Status: The category of eligibility to vote
in the Czarist Duma election.

Number on List: The number on the original list.

Town: The place of voter registration. See the table
of the 20 included towns, above.

Gubernia: The province. In this case, always
"Warszawa".

On a personal note: Both my parents were born in the small town of Gombin
(Gąbin), near Płock, Poland. Through these lists, I learned
who were my great great grandfathers, both maternal and paternal!
It brought me such joy and a breakthrough in my own genealogical research,
so I decided to start a project of translation all the voter lists and
publish them as a JewishGen database.

Acknowledgements

I thank Joyce Field for her persistence and assistance.
Without her help in the fundraising, nothing of this would have happened.
I also thank Warren Blatt and Michael Tobias for their dedication and
hard work on these lists.

Finally, many thanks to all the donors to
JewishGen-erosity who made
my dream come true -- the lists are now translated into English, and
posted among the other magnificent databases of JewishGen.